Regional Roughness of the Landes Forest and Surface Shear Stress Under Neutral Conditions
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Infoscience - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne REGIONAL ROUGHNESS OF THE LANDES FOREST AND SURFACE SHEAR STRESS UNDER NEUTRAL CONDITIONS MARC B. PARLANGE and WILFRIED BRUTSAERT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hollister Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3501. U.S.A. (Received in final form 21 November, 1988) Abstract. Mean wind velocity profiles were measured by means of radio-windsondes over the Landes region in southwestern France, which consists primarily of pine forests with scattered villages and clearings with various crops. Analysis of neutral profiles indicated the existence of a logarithmic layer between approximately .z - 4 = 67(*18)z, and 128(*32)z, (z is the height above the ground, z0 the surface roughness and do the displacement height). The upper limit can also be given as z - do = 0.33 (kO.l8)h, where h is the height of the bottom of the inversion. The profiles showed that the surface roughness of this terrain is around 1.2 m and the displacement height 6.0 m. Shear stresses derived from the profiles were in good agreement with those obtained just above the forest canopy at a nearby location with the eddy correlation method by a team from the Institute of Hydrology (Wallingford, England). 1. Introduction The hydrodynamic nature of land surfaces covered with vegetation is commonly characterized by the roughness length zo, and by the (zero-plane) displacement height do. These two parameters arise in the logarithmic wind-profile equation, which is usually written as (1) where V is the mean wind speed, u* = (~~/p) I’* the friction velocity, 7. the surface shear stress, p the density of the air, z the height above the base level of the surface roughness obstacles and k = 0.4 von Karma& constant. Equation (l), which was probably first applied to atmospheric flows by Prandtl (1932), is generally accepted to hold in the surface layer or inner region of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) under neutral conditions. Although neutral conditions in the atmosphere are the exception rather than the rule, the logarithmic equation has received considerable attention over the years, because it embodies turbulent momentum transport in its simplest form; it may thus be the basis or the starting point for the analysis of flows in which effects of density stratification and other complicating factors are important. In spite of all this attention, the usefulness of (1) and especially the height range of its validity over natural terrain with large roughness are not yet well understood. This was brought out, for example, in the discussion of wind profiles above forest by Hicks et al. (1979), Raupach et al. (1979) and Garratt (1979). Boundary-Layer Meteorology 48: 69-81, 1989. @ 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 70 MAR<‘ B. PARLANGE AND WILFRIED BRUTSAERT In what follows, this issue is dealt with through an analysis of wind velocity profiies in the neutral ABL above forest. The data were obtained from radio- windsonde measurements during a field experiment in southwestern France. 2. Description of Experiment Site and Terrain. The experiment, which provided the data, was conducted at approximately OO”O3’W, 44”OS’ N near Lubbon in the Department of the Landes in Aquitaine. The geographical region of the Landes is an extensive plain in the shape of a triangle approximately with its base at the Bay of Biscay, its vertex near Nerac, south of the Garonne and north of the Adour River. It is occupied mostly by pine forest in various stages of growth with scattered towns, clearings and some agricultural fields. Within a radius of about 10 km from the experimen- tal site, roughly 65% of the area is occupied by forest. In the predominant wind direction at the site, the fetch of similar terrain extends all the way to the coast, which is some 80 km away. Profile Measurements. During the summer of 1986 from May 6 through July 14, some 40.5 rawinsonde flights were made to determine vertical profiles of mean wind speed, wind direction, temperature and specific humidity. The radiosondes used for these flights were of the type designed and produced for the research purposes of the National Center for Meteorological Research (CNRM) in Tou- louse. The mean velocity and direction of the horizontal wind were derived by means of automatic radar tracking of sonde position. The vertical resolution of the wind measurements could be made as fine as 0.2 s, but for the present analysis it was taken as 10 s or, for average rates of rise of the balloon of 5 m/s, approximately 50 m. For operational purposes, days were categorized as “normal” or “favorable”, depending on the weather conditions. On normal days, four sondes were laun- ched, at 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800 UT (GMT). On favorable days (i.e., undisturbed sunny conditions, with large surface fluxes of net radiation, latent and sensible heat, and with a well defined boundary-layer evolution), soundings were carried out at 0000, 0600, 0800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, and 1800 UT. Because of the small longitude of the site, the Universal Time (UT) is practically local solar time as well. These measurements were made jointly by field crews from CNRM and from Cornell University as part of HAPEX-MOBILHY (Hydrologic Atmospheric Pilot Experiment-Modelisation du Bilan Hydrique). This was a common effort of several French agencies in meteorology and agronomy, under sponsorship of the WMO (World Meteorological Organization, 1985) in the World Climate Pro- gram (WCP), and with participation of research teams from the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The overall objective of HAPEX-MOBILHY was the study of the hydrologic budget, evaporation and related fluxes at a scale of 10’ km*. The details of HAPEX-MOBILHY have been described by Andrl et REGIONAL ROUGHNESS OF THE LANDES FOREST 71 al. (1986) and some early results have been reported by Andre et al. (1988) (See also Brutsaert et al., 1988). The friction velocity values derived from the rawinsonde wind profiles will be compared herein with momentum flux values measured directly just above the forest canopy. Approximately 4.5 km to the southwest of the launch site, a surface flux station was operated during the experiment by a research team (Drs. J. H. C. Gash, C. R. Lloyd and W. J. Shuttleworth) from the Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford, Great Britain. At this station, several meteorological variables were recorded on top of a 25 m tower, which was surrounded by fairly uniform forest with tree heights of about 20 m in all directions for approximately 750 m. At a height of 29 m above the ground, an eddy correlation flux system was placed on a mast fastened to the tower. This system which has been described elsewhere (Shuttleworth ef al., 1984; 1988) produced hourly averages of friction velocity, sensible heat flux and water vapor flux just above the trees. Neutral Wind Profile Data. Neutral conditions require that the density of the air be constant with elevation, and that the production of turbulent kinetic energy due to surface shear stress be large compared to that due to surface heat fluxes. A reliable measure of the density of the air is the virtual potential temperature, 8, = f3(1 +0.61q), (2) where 0 is the potential temperature and q the specific humidity. Strong wind is usually an indication of large surface shear stress, and the surface heat fluxes tend to be smaller under cloudy conditions. Thus, an initial identification of neutral conditions was made on the basis of the general constancy of the vertical &-profile, and on the basis of the prevailing weather, viz., windy and/or cloudy conditions. The selection was then subsequently tested by means of Obukhov’s length L and by means of Pasquill’s (1961) stability class. The Obukhov length is defined bY - u2 L= kg~~“l(p$m1’ (3) where g is the acceleration of gravity, c, the specific heat of air at constant pressure, T, a reference air temperature near the ground, Lf, = (H + 0.6 1 T,c,E) the virtual sensible heat flux, H the turbulent sensible heat flux at the surface and E the rate of surface evaporation. For the present purpose, the L-values were calculated for each flight by means of u* obtained from the wind profiles (see below) and of H, obtained from measurements both at the eddy correlation station of the Institute of Hydrology above the forest and at the energy budget stations of the CNRM (e.g., Andre et al., 1988) in the agricultural clearing at the launch site. The stability classification system of Pasquill (196 1) requires wind speed near the ground and insolation. It was developed over terrain with smaller roughness 12 MARC B. PARLANGE AND WILFRIED BRUTSAER? TABLE I Criteria for neutrality Flight Obukhov L (m) AO” Pasquill Sky Number (1 O-” “C/m) Class Forest Clearing for lowest 50 m 156 -2378 +2.09 D Overcast, cumulus 8/8. 157 -3781 -1.22 D Overcast, cumulus 8/8. 238 -1536 10058 +0.68 D Overcast, altostratus 8/8 260 -688 -860 +0.56 D Cumulus 4/8. 277 -170 -287 -8.06 D Cirrus 5/8. 303 -2638 --899 +1.71 D Stratus 8/8. 320 -255 -299 -4.71 D Altocumulus 4/8. 340 670 1073 +3.20 D Altocumulus S/8. Note: D: neutral. than forest, so that the wind speed classes should be adjusted to the present setting. This can be done by assuming that Pasquill’s experiments had roughness lengths of the order of 0.01 m and that the winds were measured at a height of 10 m; for the present purpose, the winds at 40 m above the ground were used, and the roughness of forest is known to be of the order of z.